What to Do When Unforeseen Events Hit Your Family & Your Finances

A severe car accident. A broken furnace. An unexpected opportunity to travel and work abroad. What do all these seemingly unrelated things have in common? They all have the potential to alter your family’s life and your finances. 

While sometimes these unexpected events can be good, as in the case of the job opportunity overseas, they’re often not positive. And either type of event can cause significant stress. 

If you’re dealing with the aftermath of such an event, or you just want to be prepared for some future event, try implementing the following four tips.

1. Prepare for it Mentally

To put it frankly, bad things just happen sometimes. Because you can’t always avoid such situations, knowing that they can happen and mentally preparing for such events can give you peace of mind. 

To help you prepare, visualize different situations and think about how you would handle those situations. Where would you go to for financing? How much money would you be willing to put towards certain events straight out of your pocket?

2. Save More Ahead of Time

Saving money for a rainy day can be one of the best ways to improve your finances this year (or any year), according to a Forbes article. 

If you’re saving with an emergency in mind, you’ll want to have two kinds of savings plans, a short-term and a long-term one. In the short-term, you’ll need between $1,000 and $2,000 for emergencies like a blown furnace. 

For the long-term emergencies like a job loss, you’ll want to save enough income to live without an income for six to nine months.

3. Get Help from a Professional

Some emergencies are so bad, you can’t dig yourself out of them by yourself. One of the best things you can do if you find that this is the case is to get help from a professional. 

As Clearfield & Kofsky points out, it’s difficult for the untrained to deal with the potential legal matters that can arise from events like an accident or a bad fall. Of equal importance is to find some support for your mental health as well. 

You can’t really make good decisions if your thinking has been skewed a bit by the accident. Having a professional around to guide you just makes sense.

4. Get Good Insurance

Having good insurance can go a long way to help you recover from an accident or other mishap. It also helps to ensure that tragic events won’t completely wipe you out. 

It’s okay to not know where to start when it comes to this. In fact, you should go ahead and shop around for a good policy. Doing so can save you some serious financial heartaches in the future.

The best way to handle emergencies is to be prepared for them. Just like cities and states have an emergency plan in place for when trouble strikes, so can you. 

Getting money put into a savings account and lining up some good insurance are some good first steps. Additionally, it’s critical that you know how to get professional advice when the need arises. 

Finally, know that everyone has challenges. If you prepare for them, however, they don’t need to wipe you out financially or emotionally.

6 Things You Must Check When Buying a Used Car

Even though there is something oddly satisfying in knowing that you are the car’s first owner, in most cases, this is simply not worth the price. As soon as you take the car out of the salon, it can no longer be branded as new, which makes its price deteriorate drastically. 

Just a few years later (3-6) the car will be worth only half of its original price, while by the time it is 10 years old it will cost only 20 percent of this amount. Sure, a decade is not a short time-span, but a high-quality car can be equally as functional even 15 years after it was made. 

Nonetheless, there are some things you simply must check before buying a used car and here are six of them.

1. Consult Your Budget

Every once in a while, you will encounter an offer you simply won’t be able to say no to. Imagine a scenario where you get an insanely low offer for a car you always dreamed of having. 

On one hand, you can’t put a price tag on a dream, but at the same time, the amount may still be too much for your budget. Sure, sometimes undergoing a bit of austerity is worth it if it means getting what you always wanted, but sometimes it will still be too much for your budget in the long-run.

2. Run the Report History

The first thing you want to do before closing a purchase is check vehicle’s history report. This is a fairly easy thing to do and it reveals to you whether or not the car has been in any accidents or if it was subjected to things like flood damage. 

In order to do this, however, you will have to find its identification number. Another thing you can learn this way is if the odometer has been rolled back in order to boost the price.

3. Check It out in Person

With the right angle, lens, light and a bit of work on a Photoshop, any car can look amazing. In person, it is much harder to hide some of the vehicle’s obvious flaws. 

Even as a layman you will be able to clearly see rust and tear marks, but it is usually much more efficient to bring a mechanic from a trusted auto service to do an inspection. 

No camouflage methods will be able to trick a professional and although they work for a fee, it is a small price to pay when compared to buying a faulty car.

4. Talk to the Owner

Another thing you want to do when buying a used car is speak to the owner in person. Sure, fabricating certain facts and concealing truths is easy to do on paper (or on the internet), but something much harder to pull off in person. 

You need to start with some basic questions like were they the first owner of the vehicle and why are they selling it in the first place. While this may seem as something too basic to actually be effective, you would be surprised with the amount of honesty you may encounter.

5. Going for a test drive

Probably the most important step of them all is taking a car for a test drive. The car may look great on paper, but the way it behaves you are driving it is what really matters. 

While driving, make sure to drive as unorthodox as possible (of course, without putting yourself or others in danger while doing so). You need to try breaking, turning sharply and even drifting a bit. 

For safety reasons, it would be best to go someplace remote, without a lot of traffic.

6. Transferable Warranty Can Be a Deal-Breaker

Last, but in no way least important, in some situations, the vehicle you are intending to buy is still covered by a warranty. 

If that is the case, you will probably have the option of transferring it to yourself. In this way, you will be able to save a small fortune on future repairs.

In Conclusion

The best thing about the above mentioned six tips is that they can be all performed in a matter of minutes and hours, rather than days. 

Seeing how there are not many expenses greater than vehicle purchase, any effort invested in protecting your finances is always more than worth it.

Author bio: Steven Clarke is a business consultant/web entrepreneur, also passionate about cars. In his spare time he likes to write about his ideas and share them with the world. Steven is a regular contributor to several websites.

Out on Workers' Comp? How to Take Care of Your Personal Finances

Thousands of wage earners go out on workers' compensation every year. The experience can be brutal because the workers generally lose the ability to earn money immediately. 

The following is some information about what happens to the personal finances and what a person can do take care of them during a workers' compensation period.

The Decline of Family Funds

Workers' comp cases usually put the family in shock right away because they are so unexpected and sudden. A family that does not have a good amount of savings can suffer immensely if these funds are not available. 

The bills like the utilities, mortgage and rent will continue to build up, but the injured person won't be able to pay them until the Worker's comp money comes in. 

Therefore, it may come down to eliminating some of the daily pleasures that your family enjoys such as cable, Netflix, and maybe even the internet to help you save money. 

You may have to budget out every grocery trip and even ration your daily meals. This may even require your spouse to go back to work. No matter how you look at it, until your workers’ comp comes through, you will be facing major financial changes and decisions.

The Worker's Comp Process

A Worker's comp case can go smoothly if the insurer approves the case. If the claim is

deemed invalid for some reason or another, the family finances could crumble by the time the situation resolves. 

Families will suffer horribly if they do not have a large portion of the money saved. To help you navigate this process and make sure that your finances are taken care of, you should contact a lawyer like those at Oxner + Permar, LLC. for assistance. 

Without a good lawyer on your side, you may not get all of the money you need to cover your expenses from workers’ comp. And while hiring a lawyer may ultimately cost you money, this will help you in the long run in making sure that you get the money you deserve from workers’ comp to take care of your family. 

Then you won’t have to give up those extra pleasures that your family enjoys on a daily basis.

What the Family Can Do

Making smart decisions before on-the-job injuries occur is the best way to avoid total devastation when something like this happens. Starting an interest bearing savings account is a good idea as well as making small investments. 

Both ventures can help a family to get through a crisis and it will help alleviate any financial strain that your family may incur during this trying period.

There are several things that the other family members can do once the leave begins. One thing they can do is start selling the items from the home that no one needs. 

Items like household goods and electronics may sell at online auction sites. Examples of things that can bring money in are items such as cell phones, computers, navigational systems, clothing and the like. 

Another thing that you can do is work some odd jobs. Short-term loans and pawnshop advances are tangible, as well. The best way to bring money in is not to borrow it, but it may be necessary.

The struggling family unit will make it if they follow some of the previously mentioned tips. The other tip is to file the workers' compensation cases as quickly as possible so that it can proceed quickly. 

The injured person must also do everything that the employer requires him or her to do.

UK Retirement Savings Map Shows Who's Saving and Who's Not Saving for Retirement

Dreams of a comfortable retirement are going to turn into a nightmare if you don't save money today. It's hard to believe many people are saving little to nothing in their workplace pension plans. Lately, there is a discussion going on in the media concerning this very issue.

In the infographic below you can see how the different regions in the UK are saving money for retirement. It's not very encouraging to see the neglect that many workers are taking to their retirement pension plans. Saving little to nothing seems to be the norm and not the exception. Check it out.

Credit: True Potential, A UK based company providing an online investment service